I fear the languages in my head…

October
14, 07

Arrived
in Bangkok at pass 12 in the
morning. Was euphoric when I saw the money exchange counter open. I thought I
would be waiting til daylight before I could go to Chulalongkorn as I didn’t
have a single baht with me and I was told that exchanges did not operate round
the clock.

Had
my first encounter with Thai’s bad breed a few minutes after setting foot in
the airport. Had to crawl through layers of people belligerently offering their
transportation services just before the airport’s exit. Prices ranged from 500
to 1500 baht—definitely way more than the ceiling price stated in the
information kit sent to me by the course organizers which was 400 baht. There
was one guy who agreed to take me for that price but I politely declined.
Suffice it to say that the guy didn’t smell right, literally and figuratively.

Got
one of the metered taxi cabs lining up in front of the airport. Felt safe and
comfortable when I was pointed to the guy who would drive me to my destination:
he was an old guy with an innocuous smile. He didn’t smell at all too.

The
trip was long, and was made longer because my driver went in circles looking
for the Vidhayanives Guest House. I showed him the map I brought with me which
had instructions on how to get to the place in Thai but to no avail. It was
already pass two when I finally got to the guest house. 

Vidhayanives
was modest but pretty neat for a university residence hall. We were booked in
single rooms and I thought, perfect. I have my own airconditioner, TV, sink,
refrigerator and bathroom. Perfect. The room was kind of spacious
too—even bigger than the standard double-bed Kabayan hotel rooms. Perfect.
I can really get use to this kind of living.

I
took a quick shower and hurriedly dozed off. Never mind if I had not eaten
dinner the day before and my stomach was cringing with hunger: I was harassed, dead
beat and sleepy.
 

***

Woke
up at around 8:30 am. I wanted to get
accustomed to my immediate surroundings so I got up quickly and set out for a
walk. Little did I know that this day is when I go on a shopping spree.

Sunday
is a national holiday for the Thais so many offices were closed. I asked
different people if there was anything I could do, any place I could go to even
if it was on a Sunday. All of them just pointed me to the closest mall: the
MBK. But it opens at 10 am

I was told
and I was absolutely famished (remember, I had not put anything in my stomach
for the last 17 hours). So I went around in search of a small eatery or
restaurant to grab a bite. Saw one at the “Sports Center” (I supposed it was a
sports center since it looked like a dome and at its vicinity where various
sports shops, including a food bar with chairs shaped like soccer balls) and
had a quick fix of fried rice with chicken. For 25 baht, it was well worth it.
I’m pretty sure I would be coming back there in the next days.

I
then went to MBK. A guy told me it was still close and asked me if I was
interested to go to Thai Center first to check out the jewelries and souvenirs there for sale. He said it was
owned by the Thai government and was selling items cheap. The guy seemed like a
nice fellow to me and I had nowhere else to go so I obliged. For a moment there
I thought I had finally met a nice Thai; but then the guy directed me to one of
the taxi cabs waiting at the corner and told me the driver would take me to
Thai center and back all for 30 baht. He said that was too good a deal as the
whole trip would normally cost 200 baht. Of course any sane person would sense something
fishy but 30 baht is almost just the flag down price for taxi cabs in the Philippines
and so I went along with the whole sham.

Thus
far, my impression of Thais hasn’t been good at all. For one, they have not
been very hospitable. Filipinos are way way more welcoming and friendly. I
would even say Singaporeans are more hospitable than Thais—even if I had a fair
share of unpleasant encounters with not a few Singaporeans in my brief stay
there some months ago. But heck, who am I to judge? I have only been here less
than a day; maybe I just haven’t met the nice ones yet.

On
the way to the Thai center, the driver showed me a card: it says that for every
purchase made in the shop, the card owner gets five liters of gasoline for
free. Now it made sense to me why he wanted to take me to the Thai center even
for a minimal fee. We got to the Thai center in a flash as it was just a few
blocks away (proving that what the previous guy told me was indeed a sham—200
baht my butt).

Nothing
special in the center, as far as my bias is concerned. The people though were a
lot friendlier. I even broke one of the items on display but the attendant at
the counter didn’t charge me for it (that was a 100 baht saved, hallelujah).

A
small jewelry workshop heralds the shop itself. I caught some of the men
working there and they were all busy doing their thing. In the shop that
follows, a huge collection of elegant and expensive jewelries—from rings, to earrings,
to pendants etc.—were put on show for everybody else’s amusement (and my boredom:
not really into jewelries; I’d go with beads and simple indigenous materials
anytime).

I
then proceeded to the souvenir shop. Nothing really caught my eye but I bought
some items there to give away to friends. Bought me a bag too and a neat-looking
notebook with two guys doing muay thai at the cover. Nice.

After
some small shopping there (spent a thousand baht there), we made a quick stop
to a dress shop called Brioni. Nothing there to see and I was completely bored
to death. I just did the cab driver a favor as he told me to stay there for
five minutes—even if I didn’t buy anything—so he can get a coupon entitling him
to free 5 liters of gasoline (takteng garapal talaga). He then took me
back to MBK. Good thing I had exactly 30 baht with me as he didn’t have any
change (raw!) when I gave him a higher bill.

MBK
was jam-packed when I got there. Lots of shops inside, mostly selling clothes,
accessories and food. It actually looks like our own Greenhills Shopping Center
as it has shops selling cheap jewelries, pirated softwares, films and music
(minus the dibidi guys). It has its own food court where traditional
Thai dishes were offered. Got myself a simple meal there for lunch: rice and
chicken with slices of cucumber. I guess cucumber is a standard side dish in a
Thai meal as my breakfast also had cucumber all over it. I also went to the
supermarket to buy myself some supplies.

As
I’m an absolute film buff, I checked out the video stores in search of good
Thai films. To my surprise and disappointment, there were very few Thai movies
for sale in all the stores I visited—most were Hollywood and Asian films, in particular, Korean and Japanese movies. I didn’t even see
Monrak Transistor and Jandara—two films known in the international scene; both
were also shown in Cinemanila. I did find a film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul:
Mysterious Object at Noon but the
copy was a US
release. It seems that while a number of Thai films have made it big in the art
film arena, they aren’t exactly appreciated in their own country of origin. The
ones I saw at the stores were mostly mainstream titles and new releases.
Nevertheless, I ended up buying eight titles—what can I say, a film buff is a
film buff.

Got
back to Vidhayanives at around 3pm and came across with two fellows from Kenya who will be taking the course with me for the next three weeks. We made small
talk before we all went up to our rooms.

8:30 pm

Manila Times

Thursday, October 11,
2007

EDITORIAL

Family, health and religion

FAMILY, health and religion provide Filipinos
their greatest source of happiness, according to a study done by the National
Statistical Coordination Board. 

The nonrandom poll of 167
respondents was done during the recent National Convention of Statistics. Guess
what the participants were working on—a proposed National Happiness Index for
Filipinos. 

Filipinos get great joy from
family, which got a score of 9.45 out of 10. The family provides a dependable
safety net. When one loses a job, he could expect the clan to take care of him.
Extended families—two or three families living under one roof—mean a bigger
safety net, although it also means that more mouths are digging into the
collective pie. 

Family in the Philippines includes the godparents (considered a child’s “second
parents”) and a large collection of titos and titas we hardly know but who
drift in and out of our lives. Filipino families tend to stay together. A son
or daughter planning to get married is usually pressured by the parents to stay
or to build a cottage on the family lot if it is big enough. 

It goes without saying that
health is wealth. What are your millions for if arthritis has knocked out your
knees? It is an article of faith among Filipinos that “bawal ang magkasakit.
(it’s a crime to get sick).” Filipinos are terribly scared of hospital costs
and the steep medicine prices and are waiting for the day when President Arroyo
signs the Affordable Medicine Bill.

The Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines and the ministers and pastors should be pleased by
the confession that religion gives Filipinos great joy and comfort. The parish
priests have one more request of the churchgoers, that they increase their
weekly tithe and give more paper bills instead of the usual coins.

Surprising is the finding that
the respondents gave sports and sex very low scores. Filipinos love sports or
they would not build makeshift basketball goals on every sidestreet. If sex is
not popular, why the surge in teen sex, unwanted pregnancies, adultery and
sexually explicit movies?

The least important sources of
happiness are community work, cultural activity and politics. This shows how
isolated Filipinos are from their neighbors. It explains why they are not above
throwing their trash in somebody else’s lot. For the most part, there is little
exercise of citizenship. In many towns and cities, civic pride is wanting. 

Culture for most is TV, movies
and the shopping mall. We are worlds apart from Cuba where practically every citizen is a poet or from Japan where classical music competes with rock. Music and
plays are available on weekends at the Rizal Park and Paco Park but the audience is sparse. Creative leisure is
unheard of, which explains why weekends, the time for productive diversions,
are unappreciated and taken for granted.

Filipinos seldom do volunteer
work partly because they are caught up in the rat race and partly because they
expect the government to do everything for them. Politics, Philippine-style,
gives the least joy because it is harmful to family values, mental health and
faith in a merciful God.

I really just had to post this…

***

Radiohead album bets on fast release, open pricing

First posted 20:47:14 (Mla time) October 06, 2007
       
 

   Michael   Erman    

Reuters

NEW
YORK–The release of popular rock group Radiohead’s new album next week
is the latest wake-up call for a music industry still struggling to
deal with the advent of digital music, experts say.

Normally
a Radiohead release generates huge buzz as fans and critics alike wait
to hear the latest musical direction of a band that has produced such
varied offerings as the radio hit "High and Dry" to the experimental
musings of "Kid A."

But the English band’s seventh
studio album "In Rainbows" is being closely watched for business
reasons; the album is being released digitally on Wednesday by the band
itself, just 10 days after the completion of recording and mixing.

And the price? Fans can pay what they want. The price listed at radiohead.com says simply: "IT’S UP TO YOU."

"This
has been a long-brewing issue with artists," said Ted Cohen of music
consulting firm TAG Strategic. "In a digital world where you can create
something relatively quickly and get it out there immediately, why
wait? Is there any overwhelming need to sit on something for three or
four months?"

Typically a band of Radiohead’s stature
would be signed to a major recording label, which would wait several
months before releasing the music to allow time for buzz to develop and
plan a tour and marketing campaign.

Tony Bongiovi, a
record producer who has been in the music business since the 1960s,
said the fast turnarounds could hurt a music business that he believes
is losing money as it becomes more singles-driven, rather than
album-driven, in the age of iTunes and Internet file-sharing.

Some bands wouldn’t work to complete an album if they could put out a good single right away, he said.

According
to Bongiovi, a singles-driven market would lead to less money for
musicians and producers, and, ultimately, to fewer artists getting a
shot at the big time.

"When you go into a record label now, its got to be such a sure thing. Otherwise, there’s no money for you," he said.

Radiohead
is releasing its latest recording alone after benefiting from label
support for their first six albums, the last out in 2003. But fast
releases might not be as worthwhile for newer bands.

"People
know who Radiohead are — there is a pent-up demand of people waiting
for the next thing," said Gartner Vice President Mike McGuire. "Very
few bands have that kind of loyal audience following."

Radiohead’s
quick release in some ways is evocative of the early days of rock ‘n
roll, when it was not uncommon to record a song in the morning, press
it into a 45 in the afternoon and have it on store shelves the next day.

Radiohead
is not alone in taking advantage of new technology, helping artists to
stay ahead of fast-changing musical trends and reducing the risk of
illegal downloading.

Stars, an indie Canadian rock
band known for lush pop songs, made their album, "In Our Bedroom After
the War," available for download on July 10, four days after completion.

The CD only became available in stores on Sept. 25.

The
band said the album would have inevitably leaked during the period
usually marked for promotion, and it hoped fans would choose to support
it by paying to download it.

It also said they believed that the widespread release would help build word-of-mouth about the release.

"We
believe that the line between the media and the public is now
completely gray," Stars said in a statement. "What differentiates a
commercial radio station from someone adding a song to their Last.fm
channel? Or their MySpace page?"

Brooklyn-based indie
rockers Bishop Allen said they have benefited from putting out their
music speedily. They wrote and recorded a four-song EP every month in
2006, making the record available for purchase or download the last day
of each month.

"The idea that you could make
something from what you’re thinking at the moment, and that fans can
immediately access those thoughts, makes it more like a dialogue," said
Justin Rice, who plays guitar, piano, and sings in the band.

"They were hearing what we were saying without a weird lag. It’s kind of beautiful," he said.